Opinion: Prosperity not defined in dollars

Californians have no one but themselves to blame for power shortages. Their environmental fanaticism simply made it virtually impossible to build new power-generating plants.

Well, if you don't want power-generating plants, then you have to put up with power shortages. If you don't want oil drilling, then you have to put up with high prices and shortages of heating oil.

It's time for the American people to tell the environmentalists that the price of their aesthetic visions is too high. I haven't found the details of California's wacky attempt at so-called deregulation, but it's obvious that the people who designed it don't know anything about the power business or the free market. That should not surprise anyone who has looked at California politics. It is not called ''La La Land'' for no reason.

The problem really goes beyond California. It is simply another area where people are not being educated about the real world. Prosperity in America is due to energy consumption. The quickest way back to the 19th century would be to shut down the power plants and the oil refineries.

Without fossil-fuel energy and the electrical energy generated by it, Americans would be as poor as church mice. They'd live and work in non-air-conditioned environments. They'd travel by foot or by horse. Whatever they wanted to build, whether it was a home or a hospital, they'd have to do it by human hand and human muscle. They'd no longer find opium-like oblivion from radio and television. They would sit dark and silent. The computers would be dark and inert.

It is a truth that societies regress as well as progress. The Western world went from Romans living in villas with municipal sewers and central heat to Europeans living in hovels and drafty castles with open sewers everywhere.

The fact is that for the majority of the time that humans have existed, there was poverty, not wealth. And since we in America are exceptionally blessed with wealth, it seems it would behoove us to teach our children how wealth is created.

It is not created by legislative act nor bureaucratic blueprint. It is certainly not created by looney editorials or pie-in-the-sky promises by politicians. Nor is true wealth created by speculating in paper on a stock market.

There is only one way to create real wealth. That way is to apply energy to natural resources. If you were cast away on a deserted island with only a briefcase full of money, you would soon discover what real wealth is. It is not pieces of paper. It is not even pieces of gold. It is skills and tools and natural resources and energy. Your only hope of surviving would be to apply your energy to your environment in order to find food and to fashion a shelter.

And that's still the only way true wealth can be created. Most of us are not directly involved in creating true wealth. We work in peripheral -- parasitic might be a better word -- jobs. These are jobs that would not exist if someone else had not created enough wealth for people to purchase our services.

Instead of listening to environmentalists bad-mouth energy producers, Americans would do well to learn something about the business of producing energy. A pristine wilderness in the Arctic will not put food on your table or heat in your home. Unfortunately, it is the parasites -- lawyers, journalists and politicians -- who do most of the talking in this country. As a class, all three are among the most ignorant. We need to hear from the producers for a change.